


Budapest

by WinterCap221b



Category: Marvel
Genre: Budapest, What Happened in Budapest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 14:52:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8921389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterCap221b/pseuds/WinterCap221b
Summary: Clint Barton aka Hawkeye is sent to eliminate a Russian assassin: Natasha Romanova. But he is soon enchanted by her seductive charme and things turn out way different than he planned.





	

Budapest

The night air was chilly, carrying first traces of the approaching winter that would soon hold the city in an icy embrace. It had been raining all day but now the sky was opening up and every now and then a star could be seen through the scud.  
Walking along the streets, Clint could hear laughter and music coming from the tightly packed restaurants and bars whose neon signs were reflected in the puddles on the sidewalk. One of his go-to karaoke songs, Journey’s “Don’t stop believing”, drifted to his ears and he couldn’t help but hum along as he continued his way through nightly Budapest.  
Immediately after his arrival ten hours ago, he had called upon their informant here in Hungary’s capital. Milo had been recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D. two years ago after single-handedly saving the American ambassador from an attack by a group of Hungarian mobsters. For the past couple of weeks he had kept their latest suspect under surveillance – only to fall victim to its cunning schemes, almost dying from a fatal wound caused by a knife whose blade had been coated with poison. He had survived but their target had escaped and now it was up to Clint to finish the job before it was too late.  
He stopped in the shade of a closed street kiosk and pulled his phone from his pocket. Milo had given him all the information he had gathered over time, including likely whereabouts and a picture of their target.  
Clint activated a file on his phone and a second later he looked at the face of a petite young woman with penetrating green eyes and dark red hair. Natasha Romanova, aka The Black Widow, was beautiful and deadly. She belonged to a network of Russian assassins, and according to Milo she was in Budapest to kill Jano Nagy, the owner of one of the most prestigious and influential companies in the entire country. His death would cause the stock market prices to plummet, and as this company had close business ties to a wide range of companies in the western world, the worldwide effects would be disastrous.  
So Clint’s assignment was clear: find the Black Widow and eliminate her before she could put her plan into action.  
But where was she? The attack on Milo had been two days ago. Since then she had gone off the radar and Clint wasn’t even sure that she was still here. After all, she had been warned. On the other hand, she was a professional and she wouldn’t leave a task unfinished unless there really wasn’t any other way. At least he hoped so.  
That was why he was now walking through Budapest’s entertainment district only hours after his arrival. He knew that Nagy liked to spend his evenings in bars and shady nightclubs, and so he hoped that Romanova would frequent these establishments as well, hoping to get close enough to Nagy for her deadly attack.  
The wind freshened and a light drizzle started to blow into Clint’s face. He turned up the collar of his jacket and cursed quietly. There was no sign of Romanova or Nagy and he slowly felt the effects of the jet lag kicking in.  
“Screw it,” he muttered and turned towards the closest bar, determined to have a beer and then head off for his hotel room.  
The air in the bar was stuffy and filled with the sounds of conversations, the clinking of glasses and laughter. In a corner he saw a group of sturdy men playing cards, pretty bar maids carried trays full of beer glasses to the tightly packed tables, and some heavily tattooed bikers flirted with a group of young women who clearly enjoyed the attention.  
Clint made his way to the bar and sat down on a stool at the far end of it. He ordered a beer and while he enjoyed its taste, he made plans for the next day.  
Milo had named a number of places where he had seen the Widow and that he thought she might go to again. So Clint would go there as well and look for her. It was a tideous method but it was the only way as long as they didn’t receive any new information on her whereabouts.  
A slight uproar made him look up. Something had grabbed the guests’ attention, and when he followed their looks towards the door, he saw what it was.  
A woman in a long flowing white coat had entered the bar. She had the coat’s hood pulled over her head, so her face was hidden but nevertheless she emitted an air of beauty and self-confidence that made all heads turn towards her.  
She sat down on a small table paying no attention to the people around her. There was something deeply fascinating about her that Clint couldn’t explain to himself but that made it impossible for him to avert his gaze from her, and when she removed her hood revealing a mane of wavy red hair, he almost choked on his beer.  
Natasha Romanova! She was here!  
He had spent hours looking for her, and there she was just walking into the bar he had entered only minutes before. What were the odds?  
He quickly looked away, hoping that she hadn’t noticed him. With all the other men staring at her, she probably wouldn’t get suspicious if Clint looked too, but he preferred to keep a low profile.  
Watching her from the corner of his eye, he saw her order a glass of champagne and then immerse herself in a magazine. The men around her kept looking and talking but none of them dared going over to her.  
Clint’s mind was racing. What was she doing here? Did she have any information about Nagy coming here later tonight? Would she try to kill him?  
He quickly made sure that his gun was safely hidden in the inside pocket of his jacket. He didn’t really want to use it in a place full of people, but if she really attempted killing Nagy, he wouldn’t have any other choice.  
Right now, she didn’t look like she was to do anything like this though, reading her magazine and sipping her champagne, every now and then kindly rejecting a suitor brave enough to approach her.  
She had been sitting like this for about half an hour when she suddenly got up and walked over to the bar. Leaning against its polished wooden surface right next to Clint, she said something to the bar man that Clint didn’t understand, and waited. A minute later, the bar man placed a fruity cocktail in front of Romanova and she took it back to her table, but not without darting an interested look and the hint of a smile at Clint first.  
Clint couldn’t believe his eyes. Was she flirting with him?!  
Pretending to look around the room casually he turned his head in her direction, and sure enough, as soon as their eyes met, her deep red lips curled into another smile followed by her quickly lowering her gaze back into her magazine.  
Clint felt his heart make an excited leap. Apparently she was interested in him and that was the best thing that could have happened to him. They still weren’t a hundred percent sure whether she was really trying to kill Nagy, and he wasn’t going to eliminate her until he had definite proof. So this was the perfect opportunity to get near her without her becoming suspicious.  
He waited for a few more minutes, then he took his beer and walked over to her table.  
“Hello,” he said. “May I sit down?”  
She looked up and smiled again. “Yes, please. I was starting to worry that you would never come over.” Her English was flawless. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought she was American.  
“I wasn’t quite sure your looks were really intended for me,” he apologised. “I’m Alex, by the way.”  
“Alice.”  
“Nice to meet you, Alice. What are you doing here? I didn’t expect to meet a fellow American in the very heart of Hungary.”  
“Neither did I. I work as an interpreter for different American companies and agencies here in Budapest. It’s my day off and as my cat is kind of in a bad mood these days, I thought it would be better to spend the evening outside my apartment.” She had a very pleasant laugh, and Clint couldn’t help but admire how easily she made up a completely false life story. But then again, the same did he, telling her that he had quit his job as an accountant in a bank some weeks ago and was now travelling the world trying to find out what to do with his life.  
They kept on talking and were soon lost in conversation, Clint constantly having to remind himself that none of this was real and that his main aim had to be to somehow find out whether she had any plans to assassinate Nagy or not.  
It was almost midnight when Natasha finally looked at her watch and grabbed her coat. “How about we take this to a more private place?” she asked in a way that made it clear that no one had ever refused this offer.  
“Sure,” Clint said. He paid for their drinks and followed her outside.  
She hailed a cab, and a minute later, they were driving through the deserted streets of nightly Budapest.  
“Where are we going?” Clint asked while they passed streets he had never seen before.  
“To a place of pure imagination,” she replied with a smile, placing her hand on his thigh and leaning into him. “Don’t you trust me?”  
Of course he didn’t – but when her full lips touched his and her fingers made lazy circles on the inside of his thigh, his mind went blank and all he could think about was the beautiful woman kissing him and the overpowering desire building up inside of him.  
The cab stopped and they stumbled out of it and into the staircase of a simple four-story house. Somehow they made it to the top where Natasha opened the door to a small apartment under the roof. For a moment Clint wondered whether this really was her apartment and whether the cat she had talked about really existed but again her kisses distracted him.  
They got rid of their jackets, kissing and fumbling, crashing into walls and wiping off a lamp from a side table. Natasha was demanding, assuming control of the entire situation. Her lips were everywhere, her hands ghosting over his body, setting him on fire and making him forget all of his original plans.  
She pulled his shirt over his head, threw it away and then pushed him on the bed.  
“I like seeing you like this,” she cooed standing at the foot of the bed, looking down on him. “Will you do whatever I ask of you?”  
Hardly able to think he nodded. “Yes.”  
“Good.” Within the blink of an eye, her expression changed. Her eyes went cold and out of nowhere she suddenly had a gun in her hand pointing it at him. “Who are you?”  
Clint immediately snapped back to reality and reached for his own gun, only to realise that it was in his jacket somewhere on the floor of the living room. Of course this had all been part of her plan. How could he have been so stupid?!  
Slowly raising his hands he sat up and decided to play dumb. “Wow, you’re into role plays. Nice. I can be whoever you want me to be. How about a student and you’re the sexy teacher?”  
“This isn't a game!” she snapped. “I want to know who you really are.”  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I told you who I am. My name is Alex, I’m an accountant from Modesto, California, and I’m only here to get to know the city. If you want money, it’s in the back pocket of my jeans. If you’d just let me…”  
“Don’t move!”  
He froze and put his hand back up.  
“Don’t take me for a fool,” she said angrily. “You guys have been following me for weeks. I got rid of the other guy but I knew that it wouldn’t end there. So I watched his apartment and when you showed up there earlier today, I knew you’d be coming after me next.”  
Clint moaned internally and felt like kicking his ass for being that stupid. It all made sense now. “You followed me.”  
She laughed coldly. “Of course I did. Did you really think it was an accident that I entered the bar and flirted with you? You men are all the same. As soon as you see a pretty face showing interest in you, your ego gets the better of you and you throw all caution to the wind.”  
Clint had to admit that this was exactly what had happened but he couldn’t let his stupidity ruin the plan. “Listen,” he said as calmly as possible trying to gain time. She clearly had the upper hand here with her holding a gun and him being half naked. “I think this is all a big misunderstanding. I just want to –“ Before he could finish the sentence, a movement at the very edge of his visual field made him stop, and without thinking, instinct kicking in, he lunged forward and pushed Natasha to the ground, only milliseconds before a bullet crashed into the wall where her head had been a moment before.  
They quickly crawled behind the bed and, leaning with their backs against it, looked at each other wide-eyed.  
“Who is this?!” Clint asked, dodging as another bullet smashed through the window.  
“No idea! I thought they were your team!”  
“Nope. Looks like you’ve got even more friends wanting to meet you.”  
“Oh, shut up!” She grabbed her gun more tightly and carefully looked over the edge of the bed towards the window. “How could you even see them? It’s pitch-black out there.”  
“I saw the muzzle flash. They call me Hawkeye for a reason.”  
“Hawkeye? What kind of name is that?”  
“What kind of name is Black Widow?”  
“Ha! I knew it! So much for Alex from Modesto!”  
“Do you really think this is the right moment for this argument?”  
“I didn’t start it!”  
“Well, I’m finishing it! I don’t know who this is out there but I'm not willing to die because of you.”  
Natasha shot him an angry look. “You were the one trying to kill me in the first place.”  
“Yeah, well but I didn’t. In fact, I just saved your life. So maybe you could stop arguing for a moment and help me think of a way to get out of here. Do you really not know who they are?”  
“Well, I’m not particularly popular with a lot of people. They could be Hungarian intelligence, mobsters, the Russians...”  
Clint frowned. “The Russians? I thought you were –“  
“Yes, I was. Now shut up and take this.” She handed him a stick-like object she had taken from the drawer of her nightstand.  
Clint looked at it in confusion. “Is that a vibr-“  
“On the count of three, you push that button, throw it towards the window and make for the door to the living room.”  
“What? Wait –“  
“One. Two. THREE!”  
Clint pushed the button on the strange object and threw it behind him at the window where it exploded in a ball of smoke.  
“Go, go, go, go!” Natasha yelled running hunched down into the living room, Clint close behind her.  
“What now?” He asked, quickly putting his shirt back on that he had grabbed from the bedroom floor. “You do realise they are probably surrounding the house at this very moment, don’t you?”  
“Yes, of course.” Natasha said impatiently. “I'm not stupid!”  
“I didn’t say you –“ He broke off as Natasha suddenly stripped off her dress, not caring in the least that she was now wearing nothing but a black lace bra and panties. “What are you doing?!”  
“Getting into something more suitable for a fight. I prefer my enemies to not see my underwear.”  
“I should consider myself lucky then”, Clint said tearing his eyes from her perfect body and checking his gun.  
“Well it’s definitely something you’ll never see again, Hawkeye,” she replied slipping into a skin-tight black catsuit. “Hope you can’t only see in the dark but also shoot.”  
“No. I became one of the world’s best assassins by throwing cotton balls at my enemies.”  
“God! I haven't even known you for four hours and I already hate you!”  
Clint grinned and handed her a knife and gun that had been lying under a cloth on the side table, while they could hear heavy boots stomping up the staircase. “Believe it or not, that’s not the worst date I’ve ever had.”  
“Glad, you’re enjoying yourself.” She tucked her weapons into her boots and walked over to the opposite wall where she activated a hidden mechanism making the bookshelf slide to the side revealing a hidden doorway.  
Clint had no time to be surprised because at this very moment they heard glass and wood splinter as an unknown number of men entered the apartment trough the front door and windows simultaneously. Natasha seized him by the arm and pulled him into the hole just as the first bullet zipped past them. The “door” immediately slid shut behind them leaving them in a darkness that was impenetrable, even for Clint.  
“Where are we?” He asked blindly following Natasha who seemed to know exactly where to go and quickly led him through a narrow passageway.  
“It’s sort of a house between houses,” Natasha explained. “During World War II, it was constructed to enable the Jewish residents – duck your head – to escape unseen. There’s a cavity of about six feet within the walls of the two adjoining houses but from the outside it cannot be seen. Careful, there’s a staircase right ahead.”  
Slowly Clint’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, so he was now able to see at least the outlines of the walls next to him and the steps of the staircase they were now running down.  
When they had reached the bottom, Natasha let go of his hand and crept towards the wall. She pressed her ear against it and listened.  
“What are you –“  
“Shhhh.”  
“Where are we –“  
“SHHH!” He couldn’t see her face but he knew that she was looking at him angrily.  
“I’m trying to find out whether there is somebody out there,” she whispered. “I'm not keen on running into their arms blindly.”  
After another two minutes, she seemed satisfied. “Okay, looks like they are still upstairs or on the other side of the building. Come on.” She activated another hidden mechanism and a door opened releasing them into a small inner courtyard that was dimly lit by a single lantern hanging above the archway leading to the street. The rain had become stronger again and it was cold.  
From above they could hear their attackers yell in a Slavic language – Clint couldn’t tell whether it was Hungarian, Russian or something else – and here and there, lights in other parts of the building went on and curious neighbours stuck their heads out of the windows to see where the noise was coming from.  
“Time to go,” Natasha said, sneaking in the shadows of the wall towards a bulky object in a corner of the inner yard. When they had reached it, she pulled the cover from it, revealing a black motorcycle. “Get up.”  
“Couldn’t find a more subtle way to escape, could you?” Clint said while climbing up behind her. “They’ll hear us right away.”  
“You’re welcome to stay here,” Natasha said starting the bike.  
“No, thanks.”  
“Didn’t think so.” And with this, they sped out into the night, the bike roaring loudly, rain in their faces and their attackers brought back on their track.  
Natasha clearly knew her way around Budapest. She chased through side streets and alleyways that Clint didn’t even notice until she turned into one of them. They were quickly putting some distance between them and the house but apparently not all of their attackers had been in the apartment when they left because it didn’t take long until they noticed a black van following them with high speed. Its headlights came closer and closer even though Natasha did her best to throw them off. But the rain and the cold made the streets slippery, and more than once they almost lost balance when turning around a corner.  
Clint didn’t know how long they had been driving like this – it looked like they were nearing the outer circles of the city –, when the first bullet zipped past them.  
“We need to loose them!” he yelled into Natasha’s ear, not sure whether she could actually hear him over the noise of the airflow.  
She yelled something back that sounded like “almost there!” and a minute later she stopped in front of a barn-like building.  
Without turning off the engine, she jumped off, Clint following suit, and dropped the bike before heading into the barn.  
“What is this?” Clint asked as Natasha turned on a small lightbulb hanging from the wooden ceiling and hastily tore open the doors of an old cupboard.  
“My arms cache,” she explained handing him a rifle, several pistols and knives as well as ammunition.  
Clint took them and threw a look past her. “Do you happen to have a bow in there?”  
“A bow?”  
“Yes, bow and arrows. That’s what I'm best –“ He was interrupted by a car squealing to a halt outside the barn.  
Natasha looked at him, and without saying a word they knew what they were going to do.  
While Natasha ran towards the back of the barn, Clint climbed a ladder leading to an intermediate floor functioning as a storing place for hay and straw. He had just vanished through the hole in the floor when the doors to the barn crashed open and four heavily armed men stormed inside. Their faces were covered by tactical masks and they were just about to fan out when the first of them dropped to the floor, a bullet from Clint’s riffle stuck in his brain.  
The other three immediately started firing upwards but the wooden planks were too thick to let the bullets through and a moment later, a second man collapsed, shot down by Natasha. Before the remaining two knew what was happening, they were dead too, the entire scene not having lasted longer than a minute.  
Still holding his rifle at the ready, Clint carefully climbed back down, joining Natasha who was already squatting down next to one of the men and taking off his mask. When she saw his face, she nodded like it confirmed her expectations.  
“You know them? Who are they?” Clint asked looking at the dead eyes of the broad-shouldered man.  
“Russians,” Natasha replied getting back up. “My team.”  
“What? But they tried to kill you.”  
“I know. They probably disagreed with my decision to not kill Nagy.”  
Clint looked at her in confusion. “You what? But you ... I thought ...”  
“Listen, we don’t have time for explanations now. They’re not the only members of the team. In a few minutes this place will be swamped with highly trained assassins and we shouldn’t meet them unprepared. The only way they can get in here is through the front door. So we’ll give them a warm welcome.”  
“And what if they decide to give us a warm welcome? If they just burn this damn barn down?”  
“Then I hope for you that you’re wearing your fireproof underwear.” Natasha grinned and started to strip her fallen ex team mates off their weapons.  
Clint couldn’t help but smile too. Throwing a look around the barn he discovered a pile of thin plastic and iron pipes lying in a corner, and an idea formed in his mind. He quickly grabbed a rope one of the men had bound to his belt and hurried over to the pipes. A few minutes later he held an improvised bow in his hand, the three-foot-long iron pipes functioning as arrows.  
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Natasha asked with a sceptical look at the weapon.  
“No but there’s only one way to find out.” He lifted the bow, put an “arrow” on the string and aimed at the wall. A second later the iron pipe stuck a few inches deep in the wood and Clint nodded contentedly. “Looks good.”  
Through the open doors of the barn they could see headlights approaching and they tensed. Clint grabbed his new weapon more tightly and made sure that his gun and knives were at hand. “Do you have a plan?” he asked Natasha who looked anxious and slightly pale.  
“Survive,” she said when the cars stopped and the Russians rushed into the building.  
The following minutes were gruesome. Clint managed to fight off the first attackers with his bow and arrows but there seemed to be an infinite number of new ones filling the barn every time one of them was dead. However, Clint and Natasha fought together like they had been doing this their entire lives. They knew when the other one needed help, exchanged weapons so fast that they almost seemed to teleport, and always had the other’s back.  
Natasha was a fantastic martial artist. She was whirling around cutting their enemies’ throats with the knives she held in both hands, and once she flipped over Clint’s back, wrapped her legs around an attacker’s neck and broke it in one swift movement.  
Hours seemed to have passed – but it really probably were not more than ten minutes – when the last Russian lay dead on the floor. Breathing heavily, covered in sweat, their hair clutched to their foreheads Clint and Natasha stood in the centre of the barn, their enemies strewn around them like a morbid still life.  
For a moment they didn’t say anything. They were still too full of adrenalin and surprised by what they had just done. They had single-handedly killed almost twenty highly trained assassins without getting critically hurt themselves. It was almost in disbelief that they looked at the dead men and then at each other.  
“You’re bleeding,” Natasha said, carefully touching a cut on Clint’s eyebrow.  
“Oh.” Clint put a finger on the cut and looked at the blood. “I didn’t even notice. Shouldn’t be too bad though. I think it’s only superficial.”  
“Okay.”  
Again they fell silent, looking at each other, not knowing what to say.  
“Back in the apartment,” Natasha finally said, “when they tried to shoot me through the window – why did you save me?”  
“I don’t know.” And he really didn’t. “Maybe I felt like you were … different. More than a killer… Or maybe I just liked you a bit too much.”  
Natasha smiled softly. “Maybe a bit too much is okay sometimes.”  
She moved closer but before she could kiss him, Clint saw one of the Russians move slightly and shakily point his gun at Natasha’s back. In a flash, Clint pulled out his own gun and shot the man for good.  
However, the moment of romance had passed.  
“I guess we two just aren't meant to be,” Clint said with a half-smile and Natasha laughed quietly. “Want to grab a beer instead? By the way, my name is Clint.”


End file.
